Why Anna Politkovskaya was a pillar of press freedom
Anna Politkovskaya was one of Russia’s most acclaimed journalists and an outspoken critic of the Kremlin. Her assassination in 2006 sent shockwaves not only through Russia but around the world, highlighting the growing dangers of critical reporting on the Kremlin in the country.
The outrage and intrigue surrounding the case has continued in the years since, and increased again on Tuesday after President Vladimir V. Putin announced he had pardoned a man convicted of organizing the killing.
Best known for her scathing criticism of Mr Putin and his policies in the Russian republic of Chechnya, Ms Politkovskaya achieved international recognition during her lifetime and is celebrated as a pillar of press freedom in the years since her death.
A brutal murder
Ms Politkovskaya was shot dead in her Moscow apartment building on October 7 – Putin’s birthday – in 2006. She was 48 years old and had two adult children.
The question of who was behind her death has long been the subject of international attention. Her colleagues, friends and international press freedom groups have said she was killed to silence her or in retaliation for past articles. They also say they suspect the Russian government was involved in her death.
While a court convicted several men of committing the murder, authorities left open the question of who organized the killing. Mr Putin, speaking shortly after Ms Politkovskaya’s death, denied any role. International criticism of the killing, he argued, had created a bigger problem for Russia than its work as an investigative journalist. Suspicions also focused on Ramzan A. Kadyrov, the embattled leader of Chechnya, a region in the Caucasus that fought two wars with Russia but is now ruled by a Kremlin loyalist. Mr Kadyrov has been the target of some of her most critical reporting.
Making her name
Ms Politkovskaya was an experienced journalist with few peers in Russia. As a special correspondent for Novaya Gazeta, the internationally renowned independent newspaper, she had become one of the country’s most prominent human rights defenders and a critic of Mr Putin, whom she accused of suppressing civil society and fostering a climate of official corruption and brutality. to create.
After earn a degree in journalism Politkovskaya, who graduated from Moscow State University in 1980 and worked for various trade magazines, ended up at Novaya Gazeta in 1999. There she made a name for herself with her reporting on the second Chechen war, a brutal conflict that pitted separatists against Kremlin forces and Kremlin forces. terrorist attacks resulting from the war in Moscow and other Russian cities.
Ms. Politkovskaya investigated allegations of abuses on all sides of the war, and her unvarnished accounts of official brutality and crime in Chechnya provoked criticism from powerful people in the Russian military and in government circles who rejected the descriptions of atrocities committed by their country’s rulers. took into account. soldiers as ‘unpatriotic’.
Ms. Politkovskaya wrote about torture, mass executions and kidnappings and the sale by Russian soldiers of Chechen corpses to their families for proper Islamic burial.
Dangerous work
As the Russian news media came under increasing pressure from Putin’s government, Ms. Politkovskaya remained defiant, often speaking abroad about a war she called “state versus group terrorism.”
Ms. Politkovskaya, a target of harassment, received death threats and left Russia at least once, fearing for her safety. In 2004, Ms. Politkovskaya said she was poisoned while on a plane; she fainted during the flight but survived.
Her murder two years later stunned many in Russia, not only because of the brutality with which it was committed, but also because Ms. Politkovskaya’s public status seemed to give her an aura of invincibility. Her death had a chilling effect on Russian press freedom, which has severely declined in recent years.
A lasting legacy
The fallout from Ms. Politkovskaya’s reporting and her death continues to be felt many years later, inspiring plays, films and awards in the journalist’s name.
Press freedom advocates and international officials continue to commemorate the anniversary of her assassination, with the State Department in 2021 commemorating Ms. Politkovskaya’s “courageous work to shed light on human rights violations” and saying that the “continued impunity” because those who ordered the murder undermine freedom of expression in Russia.
She was one of at least six Novaya Gazeta journalists murdered since 2000. Its editor, Dmitri A. Muratov, and Maria Ressa, a journalist in the Philippines, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021 for their “courageous fight for freedom of expression.” ”
Ms. Politkovskaya’s desk at the now-closed newspaper sat untouched for seventeen years — with her typewriter, glasses, notes and a book, the title of which seemed to sum up the impunity of the Putin era: “History of an Undecided research.’
Neil MacFarquhar And CJ Chivers reporting contributed.